When colors occlude as words to the weary fail to shineFor colors, so vibrant, twirl, lighten loads of life to defineSo such pleasures sought, we weak, tremble away from work to doAs pleasant thoughts entice us from hard glories to attain and chewThe stress as thus enthralls many to paths beaten worn well toward wideYet gold glimmers under stores held hard, petrified, from the casual, deniedUgh in so fewI’m frustratedFractured streams of thoughts, such sinuous smoke slides on the sly before meThen is goneStories swirl up in here, thoughts felt, dreams of futures aheadYet instead, tubin away I mope, medicating in mindlessness, watch a world whirlBy, as I still, kept in carapace, unassailed, unmarked steeled such stainless Incarcerated, in silver set, I lie by, discarnated, the spirit sees beyondBut held, is denied to moveSo I sitA chair for secondFrom such stature stagnantSuch a soul stiltedSturs the hamster hesitantBut the stone takes the Sisyphean stroll back to birthFor though apex atop in the whirl’s circular spinAt best life is a spiral towards a line flat, fallen and at an endSo to be, before to not, as such I aspireAs thou art in color or in letting loose scripts, I aimThough the becoming burdens bear, bounding barely beyond barrenStill, I’ll tryStill, I’ll go onIn colorful wordsWithin worlds colored

Recently, the next era of Yugioh was announced with the new main character being Yusaku Fujiki . Duels on Hoverboards in Virtual reality–What’s there not to love?! Anways, this picture focuses on Yusaku’s Vr form and the new Link cards:

So this one was a little different. It started with a pencil sketch:

While I normally do a rough sketch on paper for most of my projects, I scanned the sketch in for this one:

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With the base lines and colors out of the way, I had a little fun with special effects and layer blending–Inkscape 0.92 is spoiling me a little bit too much, 😉

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So that is how I got from here

to here. Making the picture took about a week, a very short time for me at least these days (most pictures take a couple weeks to a couple months) but the rendering, oh the rendering–it took 13 long hours, smh. Happy it’s done though and I’m excited for Link summoning–I actually might watch the anime, this time. In other news, 6 more days to Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and the Switch! What a time to be alive!

Made using new Inkscape Exclusion layer filterMade using new Inkscape Hue layer filterMade using new Inkscape Color layer filterMade using new Inkscape Luminescence layer filterMade using new Inkscape Color Burn layer filter

Recently Inkscape released an updated version–0.92–with couple new key features. Previously Inkscape only had 5 layer blend modes–Normal, Lighten, Darken, Screen and Multiply–which while useful, paled in comparison to Adobe’s Illustrator wide slew of layer blend modes. But with 0.92, that was all changed. Instead of explaining it with words, let’s go through some pictures, shall we?

Original (Without the filter layer)

The normal overlay frame by itself

Original with the Normal filter frame

First, the original 4:

MultiplyScreenDarkenLighten

The new and improved selection:

Overlay

Color Dodge

Color Burn

Hard Light

Soft Light

Difference

Exclusion

Hue

Saturation

Color

Luminosity

While not every filter will be appropriate in every picture, this increased selection makes an already easy to use, powerful program even more versatile in creating art–did I forget to mention it is also free and has an extensive undo button? (Fyi, Illustrator lacks both of these features) Shade aside, I’m really looking forward to all the new cool ideas I will be able to explore with the improved version of Inkscape–2017 might be an okay year after all.